Poetry that reaches your spine

William Wordsworth rightly said that the Poetry is an expression of one’s own self. It is not a commentary but a product of introspection and realization of the purpose of your life and action. When we write a poem we are trying to understand ourselves.

What makes poetry different from a prose is that poetry is narration of experiences, emotions and so on. If the poem is an expression of the poet then the listener becomes the carrier of that expression. The poet and the listener develop a relationship and a word becomes the fairy that bridges the gap between both of them. Poetry is a form that helps the listener to enjoy and live the poem. SRCC’s ‘The book club’ believes in giving poems its own life and not merely put some lyrics on the paper. The book club is a group of thinkers and literature lovers; they love to get immersed in the magic of words and anything that captures the imaginations and soul.

On a fine sunny day, SRCC’s The Book Club along with Mildly Offensive Content organised a session of spoken word poetry where members of MOC performed a couple of poems. A.Kameshwari from One World News had an opportunity to be a part of this amazing session. Sukriti Sekhri, the president of The Book Club, SRCC, on the occasion said, “The book club was started by two of my seniors and we were always in search of a place where we could interact with like-minded people who enjoy the world of literature. It is the first time that we have held such an event with Mildly Offensive Content. I was always excited about ‘Mildly Offensive Content’, I have been following their group and few of them are my friends as well, so I wanted to conduct such program. I wasn’t sure if it could attract the attention of mainstream people but the turn up has been amazing.”

The Book Club has also earlier taken initiative to make people ‘Book-friendly’ by introducing a concept of take a book by donating one. “We collected a pool of books and gave an opportunity to people to exchange their books for another one. And the cost of the book has nothing to do with it as we believe that the story cannot be measured in money.”

Spoken word poetry is giving a performative element to the poems. MOC do not believe in writing down poetry on a piece of paper as it becomes stationary or temporarily in nature. Their recitals are based on the moment’s feelings. How they recite a poem would completely depends on how they are feeling at the moment, it can be sad, happy, confused or angry. MOC was started a year ago at the American Embassy School by Tally and Carter, and slowly it is accommodating more members. They also invite guest poets at each and every performance.

MOC tries to bring imagery through poems and if the audience is able to connect or visualise all they have to do is snap, the more they snap the more they are getting closer to the poem. Their motive is to encourage poetry in Delhi and other parts of India and create a platform for poets to perform. In a conversation with MOC, One World News got to know much more about it.

What is Mildy Offensive Content about?

We all carry MOC’s meaning to do something provocative in nature. Our poems are not to comfort you but to provoke you. It is to shake you up from within and question about yourself. The level of discomfort we want to create through poetry is the reason why we call it Mildly Offensive Content.

Do you teach as well?

We don’t teach poetry but we welcome guest performers with whom we don’t really see how talented they are but how passionate they are about poetry. The point is to extend the platform and give chance to everyone, one by one.

What is spoken word poetry all about?

Spoken word poetry is more interactive and performative. It started in US along with the beat poem, jazz and other forms, so it comes from that culture. It is more easy form of poetry to connect with and a form of resistance when it initially started. Now it has become personal as well with theatrical element in it.

It is not about how to write a poem but to be able to express those words. Your pace, volume, rhythm, movement all affects your performance. Also, theatre is taking up a role whereas in poetry either you play a role or you narrate your own story where you relate to it in a different way and your audience treat it in a different way. You do what your words tell you to do.

Do you follow any form of poetry? What other languages you want to deal with except English?

It has been one year and two months with MOC. We do free style form of poetry and would want poets who could perform in other languages, whether it is regional language or Hindi, as it is more receivable by the audience and they can connect more to it. It would enable us to reach to more audience.

Its been a year, how much do you think you have grown?

The group has grown in the sense of the reception; the way we have been received, it has given us much more confidence. We no longer are tensed about how would we perform, how would people react to our poems etc. Now it is more about doing justice to our own thoughts. So we have grown in terms of courage, diversity, variety and also trying to find own styles.

How do you decide who is going to perform when and where?

We don’t decide who is going to perform. We have a very informal sort of arrangement. We have informal meets where we invite poets who are free at that point of time, have lunch etc. Then decide where to perform. We like being organic. We don’t want to make it an organisation.

How do you make a new comer comfortable with performative form of poetry?

The point is we are allowed to stutter, we are okay about forgetting and making mistakes and that is what makes us more comfortable and even the newbies gets motivated with this thing. We are very impulsive as well, we have heard each other poems like four to five times yet we never get bored of them because every time we perform our performance is different to what it was earlier.

Any message to our readers?

Come for our performance and if you like writing then keep writing. Come out and express whatever you do, because it feels awesome and people are keen to listen.

And there would always be someone who would be able to relate to your poem, may be in different way, but yes they would. You are never alone in whatever you are doing.

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